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 BALASOR.

5

In 1804, a Collector was appointed, with jurisdiction as far south as the Brahmani river. From 1805 to 1821, Balasor was managed defined.

from Cuttack, and had no separate revenue officer ; in 1821, the District was administered by a joint-magistrate as the deputy of the Cuttack But Collector; and in 1827, it was made an independent Collectorate. the interest of the British in the District dates from a much earlier period. Balasor town was one of the first English settlements in Eastern India. The story of its acquisition is romantic. In 1636, Mr. Gabriel Broughton, surgeon of the ship Hopnoell^ cured the Emperor’s daughter, whose clothes had caught fire, and in 1640 he successfully treated one of the ladies of the Bengal Viceroy’s zandnd. When asked to name his own reward, he replied that he wished nothing for himself, but begged that his countrymen might be allowed a maritime settlement in Bengal. Accordingly, in 1642, imperial commissions were made out granting the East India Company a land factory at Hugh',

few years previous to

been established silting up of that

and a maritime settlement this

(in

1634) the

first

at

Balasor.

A

English factory had

on the Subarnarekha but owing to the was found necessary to transfer the Pippli factory to Balasor. The latter place was at once fortified, and became in reality the key to the position which England has since gained in India. During the long struggle between the Afghans and the Mughals, and subsequently between the Mughals and the Marathis for supremacy at

Pippli,

river,



it

Orissa, the English steadily kept the footing they had obtained. Defended on one side by the river, and on all others by a precipitous channel, which had been deepened so as to form a moat, and further protected by the guns on its ramparts and the armed merchantmen in the roads, Balasor was safe from attack, and soon became known as the only quiet retreat in the District for peaceful people. Industry and commerce gathered round it, and manufacturing hamlets and colonies of weavers nestled beneath the shadow of its fortified walls. Very different was the position at Hfigli, where the English traders were subjected to every possible annoyance and exaction at the hands of the Mughal governors. In 1685, our countrymen were forced into open warfare and in 1688, Captain Heath of the Resolution, the commander of the Company’s forces, who had in vain negotiated for a fortified factory on the present site of Calcutta, could no longer tolerate the state of affairs, and, embarking all the Company’s servants and goods, sailed down the Hugh and entered Balasor roads. About 1700, the mouth of the Burdbalang river was beginning to be blocked with silt and during the last century the river and sea threw up several miles of new land, leaving Balasor much farther inland than it was before, h'his silting up of the river mouth, of course, seriously injured the port and the last blow was struck at its prosperity when, in 1863, the Government abandoned the in